‘And would you come to line dancing with me soon?’ Doreen’s eyes were looking shiny now, like they were full of unshed tears. ‘For old time’s sake?’ A group of them had been line dancing together for the first time for Lily’s granny’s seventieth, and then Doreen, Lily’s granny and another couple of their friends had carried on going.
‘I’d love to,’ Lily said again, meaning it. ‘Except you’re going to put me to shame because you have five years of training under your belt. Plus if I remember rightly you were a complete natural.’
‘I actually am a very good line dancer if I say so myself.’ Doreen did something nifty with her feet for a few steps, like she wouldn’t be out of place inRiverdance, all while still holding Lily’s hands.
‘Doreen, I’m going to give you my number and I want to come with you to your next session,’ Lily said. ‘Unless it’s going to be too advanced for me.’
‘You’re on.’ Doreen let go of her hands and whipped a very smart-looking phone out of her Anya Hindmarch handbag.
Lily’s mother leaned in and said, ‘This is so kind of you, Maureen. Looking after Lily when she’s so distraught.’
‘It’s Doreen,’ Lily said, trying to keep her voice edge-free. How could her mother not know her own mother’s best friend’s name? Easily, actually; she almost certainly didn’t know Lily’s best friends’ names either. She’d know her own colleagues’ names very well, though.
‘Lily was very close to her grandmother,’ Lily’s mother continued as though Lily hadn’t spoken. ‘It’s going to be a struggle for her to cope with her loss.’ And again, her tone had flipped straight back into the one she used to use when she was talking about Lily and her health.Poor Lily.My ill daughter. Lily was feeling almost transported back in time, like she was little again. Everyone would be looking at her, sympathising with her mother about the stress of her frequent life-threatening breathing episodes, while Lily was just the ill girl. The one person who’d never treated her like that as a child was her grandmother.
She missed herso much. Losing her was like having a limb torn off, like she was going to have to learn to balance all over again. But she wasnotgoing to bepoor bereaved Lily.
‘I know they were very close,’ Doreen said, with a bit of a snap, ‘because Letitia and I were very close, too. I knowall aboutyour family. And it is indeed a huge loss for Lily but she will befinebecause she’s a fighter.’ She planted a kiss on Lily’s cheek and Lily inhaled the scent of what she was sure was some very expensive perfume, wanting to cheer. ‘Lily, I’m going to be in touch very soon about the line dancing. The next one’s a week on Wednesday. Are you free then?’
‘I’m not sure Lily will be up to anything as frivolous as that so soon after the loss of her grandmother,’ her mother said in thatvoice.
For God’ssake. Lily wanted to scream.
‘It’s your decision of course, Lily,’ said Doreen in a voice even steelier than her chignonned grey hair, ‘but I would point out that, while Letitia would of course have been offended if none of us missed her or mourned her, she would not have wanted you to mope.’
‘You’re right,’ said Lily. ‘And, yes, I am free a week on Wednesday and the line dancing’s a date.’ And she was immediately feeling a little better. This was clearly the way forward.
‘That must have been hard,’ Matt said on the Tube on the way back to his flat afterwards. ‘How are you feeling?’
It had been very hard and Lily was feeling rubbish, like she permanently had tears ready to spill, exhausted but not in a physical way, and like the world was a more miserable place now. And also really pissed off that her mother had managed to turn this into a Poor-Lily-let’s-treat-her-with-kid-gloves situation. Her granny wouldn’t have wanted that for her; as she’d said in her letter, she wanted Lily to be happy and lead a busy, fulfilled life.
Lily couldn’t go down the receiving-sympathy route right now. Yes, she should talk to Matt about how she was feeling, but what if he just treated her the way her mum had today, the way everyone used to? What if he started to see her differently from how he saw her now? And also, she’d barely seen him recently, he’d been away so much for work. You couldn’t just start confiding in someone without building up to it.
‘It was hard, like all funerals,’ she said, ‘but I’m okay. I’m going to have coffee soon with Doreen and go line dancing with her.’
She caught a glimpse of something in his eyes – hurt? Disappointment? – before he said, ‘That’s brave. That woman has serious energy.’
‘Yeah, I’m going to have to get into training first. It’s a week on Wednesday so I have time to fit a couple of runs in to try to get my stamina up. Which reminds me’ – she rummaged in her bag for her phone to show him the review of a film she wanted to see – ‘we’re free Sunday evening so we could go to the cinema to see this before you fly back on Monday.’
She caught another flash of something like hurt on Matt’s face, like he knew she was closing herself off from him. She moved her phone screen closer to him so that he could read the review better and watched him as he read. She loved his face. She lovedhim. She ought to talk to him and explain how her health issues had defined her childhood and how she never wanted to be the object of sympathy. She was absolutely certain that if he knew the whole story he’d be lovely to her, like her friends had been.
But she couldn’t start talking about it if he was already being over-sympathetic. And they needed time together, more time than they ever had. It wasn’t the kind of conversation you could get through quickly. Maybe she’d explain it to him in a couple of weeks’ time. When she felt a bit more ready and he wasn’t travelling so much. Maybe in a month’s time.
He looked up and saw her watching him. She smiled at him.
He smiled back, and said, ‘Great,’ a second or two later.
Two weeks later, Lily was eating the last mouthful of the pasta salad from her packed lunch when she realised that she was ready. She was going to bite the bullet. She was going to scatter the ashes tomorrow on her day off. Initially she’d been tempted to ask Doreen and a few of her granny’s other close friends to go with her, but then she’d thought that that might be really offensive to her parents, who she didn’t want to ask, so she’d decided to go alone. She could have asked her own best friends to go with her, but she couldn’t ask them and not Matt, and he hadn’t been around enough for much serious conversation. So she hadn’t told anyone that she was going and she’d waited until Matt was away for work again – not difficult because he was away alotat the moment.
She put the salad Tupperware back in her bag and stood up to go and wash her hands before getting back to her patients. It was a busy day on the maternity ward today and there was definitely no time for a full lunch break but she’d hopefully have time to book her train ticket to Eastbourne later.
From Eastbourne she was going to get a bus to a place called East Dean and walk up to Beachy Head. And probably bawl her eyes out in the wind. It felt really soon to be doing it but leaving it didn’t feel like a good idea, because once you’d left it for a while, when was the right time to do it? Like, what day did you finally decide that the person had been gone long enough?
God, she thought a couple of hours later. This shift had been going on since forever. She wanted to go home and prepare for tomorrow. ‘Are you alright?’ Manuel, one of the other midwives, asked her. ‘You’ve been staring into the distance for ages.’
‘Sorry, yes, totally fine, just a bit tired,’ Lily said. ‘I need to go back and check on my patient in Room Six, actually. Honestly, don’t know what’s wrong with me. Away with the fairies.’
She was alone in the flat that evening, after the end of what really had felt like an extra-long shift, when her phone rang and she saw Aaliyah’s number on the screen.
